A Spinster New Year

They’re here.  I’ve seen a new one every few days over the last couple of weeks.  There was the one about women who buy themselvesfake engagement rings to wear home on Thanksgiving to avoid prying questions about why they aren’t yet hitched.  About a week later there was the story of two women posting ads on Craigslist for temporary holiday boyfriends so that they could have someone to bring along to office parties, family holidays and to kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve.   And of course the ever popular how to hold your head high if you can’t get a date for New Year’s Eve.  Yes folks, it’s the time of year for all of those articles about how much the holidays suck if you are single.

First let me say that for various reasons I am not a big fan of Christmas.  In fact, last year I rented a cabin in the woods and sat out the holiday altogether.  This year it is my one day off with no plans and so I’m thinking a day on the couch, with some good movies, a bottle of wine and some expensive cheese are the way to go.  So whether or not I am single on Christmas has never been a real issue since my preference leans much more towards the quiet of a solstice morning sunrise.  New Year's Eve however is a totally different story.

I love celebrating New Year’s Eve.  One, it is a secular holiday that anyone can celebrate without stepping on toes or inadvertently misappropriating someone else’s cultural traditions.  You can wish practically anyone a Happy New Year and they will have no reason to be offended.  Two, New Year’s Eve is a holiday for adults. Why?  Because New Year’s Eve does what no other holiday does, it is the big annual reset button.   It is our chance to acknowledge that another year has passed, to reflect on everything good or bad that happened in our lives, to toast our accomplishments and to wipe away our failures and disappointments.  It is the night that we say, “I’m going to do better in the next year.”

In other words, we get a redo. 

And so New Year’s Eve is a night that I want to be surrounded by a hundred people all toasting away their regrets and looking onward to the future.  I don’t want to spend it with some date that I’ve scrambled to find at the last minute in order to be assured of a midnight kiss.  I want to have my dearest friends around me.  I want to be with those who I celebrated my ups with and those who caught me when I was tumbling on a down.  These are the folks who I want to clink champagne glasses with.  These are the people I want to kiss when the number hits zero and the ball drops.

In fact as far as the kissing goes, being single on New Year’s Eve is pretty much the bomb.  After all we single folks get the fun of free range lips.   There is no agonizing moment of searching the bar or club to find our date at five minutes to midnight, only do be disappointed that they chose that moment to go break the seal and wind up missing the kiss altogether.  I happen to be a HUGE fan of kissing so midnight is a moment I do not want to miss.

Finally, I do count myself lucky when I say that I’ve never had a family that cared about what my relationship status is.  I have never had to endure the pestering and prying questions that some of my single friends have had to endure.  My family has always been more concerned about whether or not I’m actually happy with my life.  Maybe some folks do feel so much pressure that they go buy fake engagement rings to avoid the questions.  Personally I think an appropriate response to why someone isn’t yet married would be, “If you really want to see a ring on my finger, then why don’t you buy me one? After all Christmas is just around the corner.”